I wouldn't worry about it either, but we give Malka small sips of wine on the sabbath and holidays (she doesn't like it anyway). If you're worried about the alcohol, though, use de-alcoholized wine, because alcohol doesn't tend to cook out - that's a myth.

I am reporting in on the Rotation Rule. It is great! Malka is already eating more and a greater variety of things. It's also forcing us to think of more things to offer her. For those who don't know - the Rotation Rule says don't offer the same foods two days in a row. And also to offer choice and reassurance within the rotation, so if you had oatmeal for breakfast today, tomorrow ask if they want tofu scramble or peanut butter toast and let them know they'll get to have oatmeal again tomorrow.

Malka ate oatmeal, tofu, and tomatoes for breakfast, a couple bites of a pudding cup post-nap, and yankee bean/veggie soup, pb&j on an english muffin, and french fries and ketchup for dinner. We didn't succeed at eating lunch, mostly because I went back to bed and slept through it and she was busy playing with the downstairs neighbors' kids while my husband built something for them and ignored her.

Malka ate handfuls of unmelted daiya shreds off my tofu scramble this morning and did an excellent job avoiding the tofu and veggies. Then she used my husband's french fries as a vehicle for ketchup sucking, being careful to avoid actually consuming a fry. Ridiculous child.

I, too, don't worry about it for the most part-- I use up the dregs of wine bottles in pasta sauce all the time. I have heard that less alcohol cooks off than one thinks, but most recipes still use small enough quantities of wine that the total amount of alcohol per serving of the final dish ends up pretty small, I think. Also, for what it's worth, it seems really unlikely to me that the getting used to the taste of wine in small, culinary amounts would increase the risk of alcoholism. Sure, I wouldn't serve a dish with wine in to a recovering alcoholic who tries to abstain, but that's because a recovering alcoholic already knows the taste of alcohol quite well and it could be a trigger for them.

Not what you asked, but I don't cook with liquor for kids or pregnant people-- I don't trust that the alcohol is cooked out of vodka sauce, for example.

The rotation rule sounds great, Ariann! I should try that with Lydia. I'm getting a bit worried about her pickiness recently-- she's still great with all fruits and veggies, but getting more calorie dense foods into her is hard. I think it's easy for me to fall in a rut and feed her the same foods over and over. Maybe we need a "No pasta for three days" rule to start us off....

This may not come as much of a revelation to you all as it did to me (I was discussing with a friend and her mom and apparently it is like a tried and true trick), but I discovered that I can get J (20 months) to eat much more+more variety of foods if she gets to eat it off a toothpick.

(it was the movie Mermaids where Cher's character serves mini food on party picks all the time, right? Sudden memory.)

The rotation rule sounds great, Ariann! I should try that with Lydia. I'm getting a bit worried about her pickiness recently-- she's still great with all fruits and veggies, but getting more calorie dense foods into her is hard. I think it's easy for me to fall in a rut and feed her the same foods over and over. Maybe we need a "No pasta for three days" rule to start us off....

Yeah, I think I should try that too. It's so tempting to only give her the food which we know she likes! I'm having trouble with the protein part....it so easy to just give her some tofu every day. I ordered a big bag of gluten flour so I can make some chickpea cutlets and other stuff made out of beans and gluten, I think that will be ideal. I'm planning to make a large portion of small cutlets and put them in the freezer. Any other ideas how to get my daughter to eat some more protein rich food?

She will eat chickpeas, but that's about it. But I never tried bean soup, maybe she will like that as well. Do you have any recipe you can recommend?

I feel a bit bad about dinner tonight. The last couple of days Luna has been really picky, she hardly wants to eat anything. Most of the time she doesn't even want to try, which can be so frustrating. Today I made the Roasted Butternut Alfredo, using pumpkin instead of butternut squash. I kinda hoped she would like the sauce, but I didn't count on it so I reserved some of the pasta without the sauce. I was right, she didn't like it, but at least she tried a bit so I was happy about that. But she refused to eat the roasted pumpkin I had saved for her, although she had it before and really liked it. She wouldn't even try, it went straight to the floor. I was sure she would like it if only she would taste a tiny bit. So I asked my partner to hold her, and then I tried to put some of the pumpkin in her mouth :( It definitely worked, after she tasted a bit that was left on her lips, she ate like 6 pieces of pumpkin in 30 seconds. But I feel terribly guilty now, I don't want to force her to eat something.

How old is she? The same website I got the rotation rule from suggests giving a kid a pea-sized portion of a food and then asking them to tell you what it tastes like (challenge them to use two adjectives; don't tell them they don't have to eat it if they don't like it because that insinuates that if they do like it they have to eat it) and then letting them be in charge of whether or not they eat it, spit it out, ask for more, etc. I imagine that only really works with fairly verbal kids. The site also says that whether a kid liked something in the past or not doesn't seem to be predictive of whether or not they'll eat it - both because their tastebuds aren't stable (so they can flip-flop on liking it) and because there are control issues involved. So the trick is to not make it a battle of wills.

No particular recipes for bean soups, all of our bean soup successes have been out of the house - she likes the black bean soup at Panera and the lentil and yankee bean (white beans in a tomato base) soups at our local diner! I think it's equal parts "spoon = fun" and high salt content that makes it attractive.

Vi will pretty much eat anything in a soup - the black bean soup at Panera is a hit with us too (and oh man what I wouldn't do to get rid of their stupid soup schedule and just make it available every day!!), any of the Amy's ones, the barley-veg refrigerated soup at Costco has been a go-to lately... And the Uncheese one I mentioned in maybe-this-thread actually has tofu in it. Plus if you're Dutch, how about some good ol' veganized split pea soup?

I also made something I will charitably call Edamasto the other day when I was craving pesto but had no basil or other herbs - it was a bit odd but Violet *loved* it on gnocchi. It's funny because she'll spit out a whole soybean. It's from a recipe for pea pesto, actually - not sure how high in protein peas are, but with the almonds it should be decent: http://www.marthastewart.com/318010/pas ... -pea-pesto

We have had mixed success with gluten stuff.. I think it is just too tough to chew well for V at this point (17m). So we mostly rely on a lot of ground nuts and nut butters in things, whole grains, and beans/tofu. I don't worry about it too much beyond trying to make sure that at least 2 meals have some high protein component each day.

I try to serve a good source of protein with every meal. Breakfast its usually nutbutter and/or yogurt.

I've had good luck with the tempeh helper and black eyed pea/tempeh bean balls in Appetite for Reduction.

Actually, she likes black eyed peas pretty consistently and loves chickpeas. She also eats tons of refried beans on tortillas.

Tofu is usually popular, so I try to find different ways to serve it. Last week I made calzones with broccoli and tofu as the filling and she loved that. She really likes chickpea cutlets and like someone mentioned you can make a big batch of these, bake them, and freeze them. Same thing with the bean balls.

I'm not super concerned about protein because she is drinking lots of soy milk and still breastfeeding, but I want her to get exposure to those foods.

I feel like the last I looked, the protein requirements for infants were somewhere around 9g a day - it was super low. Maybe it's a bit higher for toddlers, but really Malka could get that in one serving of tofu and her formula actually covers at least 90% of it, so I have become a little less stressed about pushing the protein. I think as they age and wind up with a higher protein to calorie ratio (like adults) it becomes more of an issue, but fat seems to be the bigger thing to worry about at this stage (and we suck at fat - I'm relying on the tofu and formula there, too!).

How old is she? The same website I got the rotation rule from suggests giving a kid a pea-sized portion of a food and then asking them to tell you what it tastes like (challenge them to use two adjectives; don't tell them they don't have to eat it if they don't like it because that insinuates that if they do like it they have to eat it) and then letting them be in charge of whether or not they eat it, spit it out, ask for more, etc. I imagine that only really works with fairly verbal kids. The site also says that whether a kid liked something in the past or not doesn't seem to be predictive of whether or not they'll eat it - both because their tastebuds aren't stable (so they can flip-flop on liking it) and because there are control issues involved. So the trick is to not make it a battle of wills.

She is almost 15 months now, so I'm afraid this method isn't going to work. So far she only knows about five words :)

Maybe I shouldn't be so worried about her diet. I'm still breastfeeding her so she will get some protein and fat from that.What was the name of the website again Ariann? Maybe reading that will give me some more confidence.

Marla, mine is nearly 16 months. I definitely think the rotation rule would work - just rotate among foods you know she likes to start and don't freak if you give new foods (or even old foods) and she doesn't eat them. The site also talks about super picky eaters who are attached to a particular brand of a certain food (in our case, Malka will only eat soft, cold, cubed tofu) and you can expand their willingness to eat more variety by just serving them variations on that food (so tofu scramble for us, or firm tofu).

Tonight I made steamed sausages with garlic & herbs plus roasted potatoes, carrots, onion & apple. By all rights he should have loved this, but he wouldn't even try a bite.

In the past I've occasionally been able to stick a bit in his mouth and then once he realizes it is delicious he eats it, but most of the time he won't even let the fork get near his mouth.

Sometimes I've had luck with letting him try a bite when I've just finished cooking it, while he is still playing, not yet sitting in his chair. It usually works, because I think maybe it is fun to just try a bite of what mommy is cooking, then when he knows it is good he is more likely to be OK with stopping playing to sit and eat.

I should have tried that tonight! Maybe I'll try Ariann's suggestion about asking him to describe it too.

_________________I'm not asking for utopian dreams...just a little peace in this world. That's a logical thing. - Deee-Lite

I love "It's Not About Nutrition" for the philosophy, but the rotation rule is hard for me, especially when the husband's at sea. It's tough trying to manage all the leftovers and produce, I find. Someone really needs to restrain me from buying produce at Costco!!

And limiting bananas to every other day requires way more restraint than I would have expected before I had a toddler who a) just nibbles at everything else and then nurses all night, b) reverts regularly back to transitional poops if not fed a steady diet of them, and c) upon seeing a banana anywhere in a room will yell "BAAAAH BAAAH BAAAH" until it is fed to her.

Malka never got out of transitional poops! She remains frustrating, but when we follow the rule things seem to go better.

Could you apply the rule to the form of serving bananas rather than the ingredient as a whole? Like one day whole bananas, then bananas in a smoothie, then cut up over oatmeal? We are trying that with tofu, to get her to eat it prepared different ways.

Marla, mine is nearly 16 months. I definitely think the rotation rule would work - just rotate among foods you know she likes to start and don't freak if you give new foods (or even old foods) and she doesn't eat them. The site also talks about super picky eaters who are attached to a particular brand of a certain food (in our case, Malka will only eat soft, cold, cubed tofu) and you can expand their willingness to eat more variety by just serving them variations on that food (so tofu scramble for us, or firm tofu).

Yesterday I made the Black bean soup with Roasted Poblanos and Pickled Red Onion from Vegan Eats World. She didn't really like the soup, she only took about 2 bites, but she did eat some pickled red onions, and drank some lime juice. Weird kid. Oh and I discovered she really likes the cheeses I made from Vegan Artisan Cheese. They are pretty fatty and protein rich so that's good.

We gave LittleMap his first non breast milk food today!!! We've been letting him lick raw fruits and veggies for a while which he enjoys. (Tip- kale stalks are an excellent chew toy) He's obsessed with what we are eating and drinking, and last night he put his hands right into Sweetheart's dinner, and yesterday was his four month birthday, so we thought we should try it. We boiled some rutabega and blended it with soymilk. He hated it! hahahaha! I was so excited. ha! i was wearing him on my lap and sweetheart was offering him the spoon of food, and sweetheart was telling me about the hilarious "this is disgusting" faces littlemap was making :). So we put the food away and he had some yummy breastmilk :). We'll try again in a couple days. i'm so looking forward to him being able to eat with us.